What is the percentage of gun crimes in other countries like England?

Doug.38PR

Moderator
Is crime, with guns involved higher, where people aren't permitted the right to self defense or lower?

Is crime in general higher or lower where people can't defend themselves (I've heard that it is indeed higher)
 
Basicly, from what I have read, you are FAR more likely to be a victim of crime in England, but you have a higher, but still very very small, chance of being murdered in the US.

Reason Magazine:....Except for murder and rape, it admitted, "Britain has overtaken the US for all major crimes."
This was in 2002 no less.

Here is another link with some good reading.

I seem to have trouble finding data newer than 2004-2005. Of course it takes some time for new data to become available. But the general consensus is that crime overall is much higher in the UK. Much higher percentage of home invasions in the UK as well.

Heck, in the UK you get a larger fine for putting your trash out on the wrong day than for shoplifting. Those Brits DO NOT have their priorities straight. Neither does the Fed in the US, but they are nowhere as bad as they are in the UK.
 
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They don't really relate that much: some countries (and US areas that are difficult to acquire guns) are low - some high - in crime, same abroad.
For example, both Switzerland and Israel have realtively low crime rates, yet everyone MUST have a weapon, for they are all militia.

New York City had much crime and close to 0% ease in acquiring legal gun permits (at least handgun). Currently New York's crime rate is VERY low in comparison to other major cities and has close to 0% ease in acquiring legal gun permits (at least handgun).

So, no real correlation.
 
The broad trend that I've been able to discern is that the prevalence and availability of firearms has very little influence on the overall amount of violent crime in any particular society. There are countries where guns are highly prevalent which have low rates of violent crime, like Switzerland and Finland, and ones which have high rates of violent crime, like Brazil. In countries where gun ownership is uncommon, you've got Japan at one end and the UK at the other. According to the latest European Crime and Safety Survey, alcohol consumption plays the largest role in violent crime rates, with rates being in highest in countries where "binge drinking" (drinking a lot in a short amount of time) is most common (the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden).

What higher prevalence of firearms does do (all other things being equal) is make violent crime more (likely to be) lethal. For example, in Europe, if some macho idiot gets into a dispute with a nightclub bouncer, he might pull a knife. When something like that happened here in Oly a couple of years back, the punk (some gang-banger from Tacoma) went to his car, came back with a gun and opened up on the front of the club. It's simply easier to kill someone with a gun than with a blade; that's why we don't fight wars with pikes and swords any more.

Note, incidentally, that I'm not making a distinction between legally owned and illegally owned firearms. There's an oft-repeated statistic in which Northern Ireland is cited as being "low gun ownership, high homicide rate"; well, low legal gun ownership, yeah, but with three decades of the Troubles, I don't buy that there weren't an unusually (for Europe) large number of guns knocking around the province.
 
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